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 "a celebration of female talent [...] a reminder of how much potential may have gone unfulfilled as a result of gender inequality"― Rosanna McLaughlin, Frieze Online, 14 May 2018.Tales of artistic ambition and gender equality at the turn of the century  Prize & Prejudice: a selection of works from the Slade class of 1918 (2018) was an exhibition and series of programmes dedicated to artistic ambition, struggles and successes of artists emerging from the Slade School of Fine Art during its foundation years. It explored the experience of prize-winning artists, mostly women, now largely forgotten due to prejudice and circumstance.Curated by Dr Andrea Fredericksen, Helen Downes and Nina Pearlman, Prize & Prejudice was the outcome of a major research project, Spotlight on the Slade Collections, funded by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art to increase physical and intellectual access to this important stored collection.The diverse programmes developed in collaboration with artists and researchers aimed to bring the voices of the forgotten artists into the exhibition space, using life drawing, performance, screenings and talks. In The Spirit of Slade Ladies Past, artist Tai Shani summoned the voices of the women featured in Prize & Prejudice using the theatricality of the séance. The programme also featured a screening of Slade artist Sarah Pucill's Confessions to the Mirror (2016).The exhibition theme and research questions were further explored in a one-day symposium, Instruction and Influence: Women in art education, with the Women’s Library LSE and funded by Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and is part of the museum's Curating Equality family of projectsThis is part of UCL Art Collections’ commitment to interdisciplinary research-impact collaborations. For more information or expressions of interest to collaborate contact museums@ucl.ac.ukMore about Prize & PrejudiceWomen swept the prizes in 1918. While this may in itself reflect the impact of war, it was not unusual. From the outset the Slade consistently recognized the achievements of female students through the prize system. The exhibition revealed the type of education received at the Slade, its particular ethos and the nature of the prize-system, using the different prizes as case studies to focus on particular artists.Prizes were awarded annually from the establishment of the school in 1871 in a range of categories such as Life Drawing, Head Drawing, Drapery and Composition. From 1897, winning works were retained, creating an unparalleled collection of art by emerging artists comprising of 45% women artists. Most public art collections are formed through retrospective assessment of an artist’s career and the Slade collection, assembled without the foreknowledge of their future position in the art world, pre-dates by far the trend in the private sector of collecting work by emerging artists.The exhibition reflected this, placing lesser-known artists alongside well-established ones. Gwen John and Winifred Knights appear next to little known multiple prize-winners Alice Smith, Mabel Greenberg and Dorothy Coke.Collaboration with Tate British Art NetworkThis part of the Prize & Prejudice exhibition featured highlights from UCL’s Slade Collections selected by members of the British Art Network sub-group British Women Artists 1750 – 1950, a subject specialist network made up of academics, independent scholars and curators, interested in new scholarship and exhibition projects that make women’s artworks more visible and better understood.The Sub Group contributed in an advisory capacity for UCL Art Museum, as a focused aspect of Spotlight on the Slade Collections, a Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art funded project to increase access to this historically significant archive of prize-winning student art. Members were invited to participate in a research workshop, as a means of capturing specialist knowledge in regards to the women artists represented in the Slade Collections, to build a greater historical picture of the artists, their contemporaries and their overall experience at the Slade. They helped recover the identity of many now forgotten artists, and hidden narratives underpinning their works. On display were a selection of the works chosen by members, with commentary on their research findings.The programme changed weekly and featured:Elinor Monsell by Helen Downes (Paul Mellon Centre Research Curator, UCL Art Museum)Jessica Dismorr by Dr Alicia Foster (Writer and Curator)Clara Klinghoffer by Alice Strickland (Curator, Nymans, Standen, Sheffield Park and Garden)Winifred Knights by Katy Norris (Postgraduate Researcher, Tate & University of Bristol)Ethel Walker by Katie Herrington (Postdoctoral Researcher, University of York)Ethel Walker by Dr Anne Stutchbury (Independent Curator / Researcher)Therese Lessore by Dr Meaghan Clarke (Director of Doctoral Studies, U of Sussex, Falmer)Joan Hodes by Una Richmond (PhD Candidate, University of Sussex)Rosemary Young by Rosanna Eckersley, (Associate Lecturer, Birkbeck College / Open University)Prize & Prejudice - in the press Frieze Online  What Happened to the Women Artists who Won Prizes in 1918? by Rosanna McLaughlin, 14 May 2018Evening Standard  Women's history month: The Slade's prize-winning women artists lost in the gaps of history, by Jessie Thompson, 16 March 2018Curating EqualityCurating Equality is a suite of bold interdisciplinary and collaborative projects that uncovered hidden histories in UCL’s collections and addressed their contemporary relevance. These brought forgotten artists into the limelight, but also uncovered their relationships with peers across disciplines, the conditions that made it possible for them to thrive, and those that led their stars to wane. UCL is well suited to exploring the visibility of women within institutional narratives and British history more widely. UCL paved the way to advancements in gender equality in education and research, and was at the vanguard of co-education in artThe models employed in Curating Equality drew on earlier projects that focused on diversity such as Black Bloomsbury (2013). New initiatives are currently being developed with colleagues at the Slade and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art for Slade 150 anniversary in 2021.Curating Equality projects include: Prize & Prejudice, Instruction and Access: Women in art education (2018), The Magic Fruit Garden (2018), Disrupters and Innovators: Journeys in gender equality at UCL (2018-19), Passing In: Access and influence in higher eduction (2018) and Redress (2018). These projects drew on Spotlight on the Slade, a curatorial research project funded by Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art (2015-2018).Twenty-six women artists were featured, eleven women in other fields, alongside work by six living artists. The suite of projects overall incorporated research from ten academics, nine students (BA/MA/PhD) and ten collections and archives. All projects were supported by student volunteers and placements. 

Highlights from six years of annual collaborations with Slade artists.The 2015 Slade Collaboration exhibition, RE-LAUNCH, marked the reopening of UCL’s Art Museum’s main space after a programme of improvements, supported by a DCMS/Wolfson award for the improvement of museums and galleries, and HLF funding.  The exhibition presented a selection of objects, prints and video, including site specific artworks, made in response to our collections and the theme of re-launch. These works were shown within the surrounds of the UCL Art Museum's permanent collection of prints and drawings, including plaster models by the renowned neoclassicist John Flaxman.The featured artists included:Ian Giles, Jonathan Kipps, Katja Larsson, Nadine Mahoney, Julia McKinlay, Milou van der Maaden, Janne Malmros, Kate Keara Pelen, Cyrus Shroff, Printers’ SymphonyThe RE-LAUNCH (2015) catalogue Includes an introductory text by Dr Nina Pearlman, Head of UCL Art Collections and a conversation between Dr Andrea Fredericksen, Curator UCL Art Collections, with Professor Susan Collins, former Director of the Slade about the collaboration.For more information about the exhibition please visit our blog that includes a conversation on the occasion of the 2015 relaunch between Helen R Cobby (UCL History of Art Alumna 2015) and the two artists who supported the project, J. Yuen Ling Chiu and Keef Winter.In collaboration with the Zabludowicz Collection, an accompanying symposium, Collecting the Emerging (2015), brought together 15 researchers, artists and curators to examine issues around collecting new and experimental art. This is part of UCL Art Collections’ commitment to interdisciplinary research-impact collaborations. For more information or expressions of interest to collaborate contact museums@ucl.ac.uk More about the exhibitionAmongst the works in the show visitors found literal references to the notion of re-launch such as Katja Larrson’s cast digger bucket representing the idea of construction and development. Ian Giles’ Leap of Faith was a revisited video work that expands upon Yoshikuni’s Bat and a Full Moon, a Japanese woodcut of a vertical-flying bat placed by the artist up near the ceiling. Kate Keara Pelen presents a set of ‘ritual objects’ referencing 16th-century prints by Hans Sebald Beham and Lucas Cranach the Elder, creating 3D objects in felt that brought the prints off the paper into a sculptural reality. Jonathan Kipps’ full-size column, made from re-appropriated building materials and methods of construction, interrupted the ordered neoclassical system used by the original architect William Wilkins.While the works by the participating artists were visually and spatially accessible, over 8,000 works of art remain co-present. With a world-class collection of prints and drawings by past masters ensconced on-site in cabinets and boxes and plaster models by the neoclassicist John Flaxman on open display, visitors were reminded of the art collections’ Victorian origins. At UCL Art Museum that which is visible is in constant dialogue with the hidden and vice versa, bringing to the fore the tensions between access to art and the regulation of its visibility. A limited edition printed catalogue was available alongside the exhibition.  

  Five emerging artists weave new life into the Slade Drapery Drawing PrizeSophie Bouvier Ausländer, Katherine Forster, Seungwon Jung, Zeinab Saleh and Naomi Siderfin consider drapery drawing in its broadest terms, including cloth, clothing, fabrics and fashion, to redress the contemporary relevance of this long-standing art school tradition. REDRESS is the result of collections-based research completed by Slade artists as part of UCL Art Museum’s 10th annual artist-in-residence programme and part of the museum's Curating Equality research project. Find out more about the history of the residency and this year's artists on this page.The exhibtion ran alongside Disrupters and Innovators: Journeys in gender equality at UCL (2018-19) at UCL Octagon Gallery, responded to Prize & Prejudice (2018) that preceded Redress at UCL Art Museum and is part of the museum's Curating Equality family of projects.The programme of events that accompanied this exhibition can be viewed here.Artist-in-Residence programmeUCL Art Museum’s annual collaboration with the Slade School of Fine Art began in 2008 with a challenge to all current Slade students to develop their own practices, while taking the time to appreciate what has gone on before.Over one term, artists are given special access to thousands of remarkable and historically important artworks from the Museum’s collections. During ten years this has resulted in extended collections-based research by over 100 resident artists – all of whom have revalued past masters to create contemporary works in a range of media, including painting, sound, video and performance.REDRESS residencies were supported by proceeds from the sale of a print edition kindly donated by Paula Rego.Previous collaborations include: Sequel (2009), Transfer (2010), Moreover (2011), Vincula (2012), Duet (2013), Second Person Looking Out (2014), Re-launch (2015), Vault (2016), The composition has been reversed (2017).The Drapery Drawing PrizeSlade prizes recognise the quality of a student's work and have been awarded annually by the Slade Professor since the School was established in 1871.From 1897, the School retained the winning works and these now comprise the Slade Collections. Women have received recognition through the prize system on a relatively equal footing to their male counterparts, resulting in artwork by women comprising 45% of UCL’s Slade Collections.The Slade's prize system includes awards for Figure Drawing, Figure Painting, Head Drawing, Head Painting and Summer Composition, with the Drapery Drawing Prize first appearing in 1918, and then intermittently until the 1950s. Drapery drawing has historically played an important role in artistic training, where it would have supported students’ ability in portraiture as well as the Summer Composition Prize, a more traditional painting prize, with set narratives derived from history, literature or the Bible.Today, the William Coldstream Memorial Prize is awarded annually by the Slade Professor and prize-winning works are retained by UCL Art Museum.About the artistsKatherine Forster works with many different forms of textile art to confront the role of female artistic labour. Here embroidery, normally associated with the quiet practice of sitting, head bowed, becomes a visual presence, loudly occupying the room. The text – an extract from a letter the French novelist Colette (1873-1954) wrote to her daughter, in which she expresses her dislike of sewing – becomes a protest slogan. Forster physically redresses the space with her elaborate drapery, thereby correcting the balance in the representation of women’s artwork in museums.Seungwon Jung explores at the Drapery Drawing Prize to revalue the unrecorded and neglected female artists who in 1918 dominated the prize system. She works with fragmented photographic images printed on fabrics, destructs them by removing the threads and then stitches them back, collecting the fragments layer by layer. Through the creation of empty space and accumulation, she considers the gaps in our existence, memory and consciousness. Her process highlights the omissions in our knowledge regarding these women, but also the ways their traces can unconsciously influence how we shape the past.  Zeinab Saleh uses textiles, methods of collage and photography to make work that references the personal as political. She draws upon various cultural sources and subcultures to create a highly individualised subtext. During her residency she explored issues of race, women and power and sourced the collection for links to her project, and ultimately her own idiosyncratic identity. Here she merges references to historical artworks with well-known logos and brands from the modern age to produce a bold personal work that explores themes of labour, economy and the digital age.Sophie Bouvier Ausländer and Naomi Siderfin's collaborative work The Tacit and The Tangible resonates with selected drawings from the Drapery Drawing Prize. Here ‘redress’ functions as a conceptual framework, with Siderfin addressing the more tacit practices of making, responding to drawings of women in action, to produce a series of performances (see programme), whilst Bouvier Ausländer dresses poses, expressions and narratives into new tangible artefacts, which are incorporated in turn by Siderfin. Developed in collaboration, their project prompts experimentation through the merging of archival, art and performance processes.Curating EqualityCurating Equality is an ongoing research project that explores the challenges around curating the hidden stories within our collections and creating environments that support innovation and equality. In recent years UCL Art Museum has undertaken a series of interdisciplinary collaborations that focus on women artists. These were preceded by research collaborations that focused on diversity and culminated in Black Bloomsbury (2013). New research is currently being developed with colleagues at the Slade and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art for Slade 150 anniversary in 2021.Other recent curating equalityprojects include: Prize & Prejudice (2018), Instruction and Access: Women in art education (2018), The Magic Fruit Garden (2018), Disrupters and Innovators: Journeys in gender equality at UCL (2018-19), Passing In: Access and influence in higher eduction (2018).

One of "the best exhibitions to see in London in 2022"- Katy McNab, Museum Crush, 27 May 2022The Slade School of Fine Art takes over UCL Art MuseumThrough the medium of printmaking, Slade 150: Testing Ground celebrates all the artists who have contributed to the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL over its 150-year history.A feature-wall is dedicated to ‘ThanksToEveryoneForEverything’, a specially produced time map of the names, in chronological order, of those who have studied or worked at the Slade since 1871. It captures important events and initiatives, including developments to the art school’s building. It is a record in progress and will be added to as more names and dates come to light.More about Slade 150: Testing GroundSlade 150: Testing Ground also hosts ceiling-high displays of experimental test prints and plates, collaboratively made by students and staff exploring print processes in the Slade’s printmaking workshops over recent years.These interventions bring to life the Slade’s renowned archive of alumni works and its teaching collection of old masters that inhabit UCL Art Museum’s cabinets. Curated displays will showcase historic student work from the Slade Print Collections, alongside video works, sound pieces and examples of printmaking tools and paraphernalia.  In a space where past and present are in dialogue to evoke ideas of process, teaching and learning via mark-making, Slade 150: Testing Ground conveys the challenge, unpredictability, and excitement of artists encountering new situations, as well as the coming together of different outlooks and approaches between students and staff.S P I I I I I N E L E S S (13 May - 10 June 2022)The Small Press Project invited visitors to S P I I I I I N E L E S S, an exhibition of bookworks made by Slade students and staff on display as part of Slade 150: Testing Ground.The temporary display included this and last year’s Y1 publication projects, Bound: Mail Art in the Pandemic and Cosmic Chromas; bookworks from students and staff inspired by the year-long online event Spineless Wonders; a selection of research publications published by the Slade Press; and Ginkgo, the result of a collaborative workshop with the legendary poet-artist Paula Claire.Slade 150: Testing Ground is a collaborative exhibition curated by Slade staff, with UCL Culture, to reflect upon and celebrate the Slade’s unfolding collective narrative during and beyond this milestone year.It is part of a programme of events marking the Slade’s 150th birthday, including a parallel exhibition Slade 150: Past, Present, Future in the Octagon Gallery. Find out more at www.ucl.ac.uk/slade/slade-150.

Print culture in the first major European media event.Revolution under a King featured a selection of prints from the early, highly volatile years of the French Revolution, curated by Emeritus Professor David Bindman and Dr Richard Taws, in a collaboration between UCL Art Museum and UCL History of Art.It is well known that a chain of key historical events characterised the French Revolution, making it effectively the biggest political media event of its time. These events were communicated extensively throughout Europe in print culture and the combination of image and text, employed extensively in newspapers and graphic works, made for powerful satire and caricature. It is however often overlooked that the pivotal moment, the Fall of the Bastille, was in fact followed by three years in which the king of France still nominally presided over the dissolution of the old feudal order. It is this period that is the focus of the exhibition, tracing the early years of the Revolution from the ‘June Days’ of 1789, through the Fall of the Bastille, to the eventual deposition of the Louis XVI in 1792. The exhibition will consist of vivid coloured prints of major events from the period, and a selection of medals, including one made from ‘chains of servitude’ supposedly found in the ruins of the Bastille. A series of events and talks explored the material’s contemporary relevance, particularly through the relationship between revolution and performance. For instance, the exhibition was brought to life in a special concert by the UCL Chamber Music Club. Read more about the exhibition and events here.This exhibition was made possible by a donation awarded to UCL Art Museum via the DCMS Cultural Gifts scheme This is part of UCL Art Collections’ commitment to interdisciplinary research-impact collaborations. For more information or expressions of interest to collaborate contact museums@ucl.ac.uk

The viceral nature of human existence comes alive in art and death in the first major re-examination of the work of Roderick Tye."These brilliantly animated busts and portraits are perfectly complemented by actual body parts, much like those used by Tye as models for his work." ― Tabish Khan, 'The Top 5 Art Exhibitions in London' Fad Magazine, 6 November 2015 This exhibition was the first major re-examination of the work of British artist Roderick Tye (1959-2009), a sculptor passionate about the visceral nature of human existence. Curated by fellow artists from the Slade School of Fine Art – Edward Allington, Neil Jefferies and Gary Woodley, with the UCL Art Museum team, The Human Presence was an experimental installation of Tye’s work. A collaboration with UCL Pathology collections and the Anatomy Laboratory (UCL Department of Cell and Developmental Biology), the show presented Roderick Tye’s figurative sculpture and drawings alongside teaching samples, never-before-exhibited human tissue specimens and large-scale anatomical drawings by Charles Bell, UCL’s first Professor of Anatomy. These displays located Tye’s painstaking approach as part of a wider Slade ethos of looking, observing and the value of culture in the making of art.The exhibition themes were further explored in the public programme, which included the return of UCL Art Museum’s popular Life and Death Drawing workshop led by Dr Chiara Ambrosio, UCL Science and Technology Studies with life-model and pathology specimens. See more information here.More about Roderick TyeAfter terms at Lanchester Polytechnic, Ravensbourne, and then Leeds Polytechnic, Roderick Tye came into his own while a postgraduate at the Slade (1982-4). He later remarked that the course allowed him to fully explore not only the making of art but also the importance of culture to this process. This was particularly worthwhile at a time when many artists were increasingly obsessed with originality and veered away from working with the human form directly. His resolve was strengthened at the British School in Rome, fuelling his desire to understand and use the human form in a way that harnessed the power, theatricality and raw emotion he felt and saw in the Baroque splendour surrounding him. His use of red wax for his disembodied heads and fragmented torsos, for example, allowed him to speak eloquently of flesh and blood, and convey the living presence of the human figure. The works displayed in Roderick Tye: The Human Presence came from his late 1980s period, as well as from his time as a teacher at the Slade in the 1990s, when he continued to probe what we’re made from and what it means to be alive.In the latter years of his life Tye turned his passion for fishing to his main focus and became a fly-fishing expert. Applying his knowledge as an artist, he published Colour Theory for fly-fishing, featured in the exhibition. The artist's obiturary is accessible here.More about the exhibitionThe exhibition is curated by Edward Allington, Neil Jeffries and Gary Woodley from the Slade School of Fine Art, in collaboration with UCL Art Museum, UCL Pathology Collections, and the Anatomy Laboratory (UCL Department of Cell and Developmental Biology). Displays feature largescale anatomical drawings by Charles Bell, UCL’s first Professor of Anatomy in the 1830s and samples from UCL’s teaching collections, including wax models and human tissue remains. UCL CULTURE Highlights from the Museum’s collections included a presentation drawing by Henry Tonks, student copies after the Old Masters, and small bronzes of Greco-Roman greats. The exhibition offered a rare opportunity to see the products of Tye’s later passion for reviving Irish Fly fishing techniques, all in keeping with the theme of life and death and his intense belief in the sheer beauty of being alive.